This is PUGS instructor George Winborn’s first course at PUGS. He’s excited to share his life experiences and to help his students savor life’s hardest times as huge growth opportunities.

PUGS Course you’re teaching and why: I’m teaching Thriving through Heartbreaking Personal Change because it feels like we’re going through a cataclysmic shift in the world today —individually and across the planet— and I want people to have the tools they need to deal with it better.

I’ll be teaching students how to use a simple meditation technique called active imagination to connect them to their inner guidance. Learning this helped me open up a whole new view into my inner life. It’s like tapping into the wisdom people used to get from grandparents or other wise elders. This wisdom is already inside each of us, we just have to connect to it.

We’ll also use movement to begin unlocking the emotions stuck inside us, and our voices to move them out of us. Once I started doing this, I felt heartbreak beginning to ignite more compassion, patience, and heart-centeredness inside me. This has played out not only in the big things I want to do with my life (like teach, listen and counsel) but most especially in the small day-to-day moments when I can spend an extra moment with myself to stay grounded, or look someone in the eye and sincerely ask how they’re doing. Heartbreak scours the soul, forcing us to expand how we love and care for ourselves and the people in our community.

George and Coco

Who’s the target audience of this class: Anyone who feels overwhelmed by what’s happening in the world today. Anyone experiencing anger, sorrow, shame but doesn’t feel comfortable actually feeling it. The purpose of the course is to give people structures they can use to process these big emotions through their minds, bodies and spirits. To let them run their course instead of suppressing them. The first time you do something, it feels scary and difficult. Over time, it gets easier. The same happens when you’re riding the waves of emotions. After a while, you come to experience these big emotions as neither good nor bad; they just are and should be allowed to do their work in transforming you.

Best thing about PUGS: It’s so inspiring being around a community of curious adults! People who want to do better for themselves and the world. While taking Financial Freedom with PUGS founder, Douglas Tsoi, I connected to how money affects me emotionally, which shifted my outdated views on money. Now I actually have a budget and a plan for how to retire! Amazing.

I care about lifelong learning because: I always want to grow. Feeding my mind and my skill sets –whatever they may be, from finances to architectural history—makes me feel alive. When I stop learning, put me in the ground. You have to exercise your mind the same as your body. It keeps it young, supple and ready for whatever may come!